


Running Down a Dream

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brotherly Love, Castiel's First Kiss, Castiel's Handprint, Coda, Dean is a Good Friend, Dean is a Softie, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, First Kiss, First Time, Heaven, M/M, Memories, angst and porn (light), coda to s05e16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6801778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Uh, Dean?” Sam says.</p><p>Dean glances down to find he's in a thin black t-shirt and jeans. He feels lighter almost, with less clothes to prevent his heart from escaping his chest, but when Cas flicks his gaze to Dean, blue eyes washing over him like the steam from the faucet he left running behind him, the room feels like it’s crashing around him. </p><p>Maybe that’s just his heart.</p><p>Maybe I actually need this, his past-self echoes. </p><p>(Rewrite of s05e16)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Down a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in a dryspell recently, and while re-watching this highly underrated, but amazing episode, I took it upon myself to write Dean a happy ending after all he went through.

Lord knows how they stumbled into this.

Literally, only He, the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-nowhere _Better Homes & Gardens_ architect of Heaven, knows how two hunters got their tire got stuck in the pothole of someone else’s fantasy.

Dean’s been twisting the key and slamming on the gas pedal, but the gear shift’s stuck in reverse. First Sammy with the firework geyser, then his mother in the kitchen with the magic crust cutter, his brother ditching their pad for _Brace-Face_ and the Brady Bunch, now it’s…

Dean grips the bathroom frame. Last he remembers those belonged to _The Roadhouse._ Now they serve as a not too distant memory developing before his eyes like a Polaroid: Sitting on the edge of the king-sized motel bed is Castiel. Matching his ghosted-over expression are the slightly stained floral sheets, puckered underneath the weight of his vessel—save for the upper half of the bed, which is readily pulled back and revealing more skin than the angel. His clothes are still askew—something neither man bothered to fix.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam says.

Dean glances down to find he’s in a thin black t-shirt and jeans. He feels lighter almost, with less clothes to prevent his heart from escaping his chest, but when Cas flicks his gaze to Dean, blue eyes washing over him like the steam from the faucet he left running behind him, the room feels like it’s crashing around him.

Maybe that’s just his heart.

 _Maybe I actually need this,_ his past-self echoes.

How many years it’s been since he’s heard his own voice in his head.

“Dean, are you listening?”

Dean blinks. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, Cas, I’m listening.”

Cas’s fingers fiddle with a string he must have pulled out from the motel comforter. With three more, Dean thinks, Cas can play him something from Heifetz’s collection. “We don’t have to. It’s my fault I got us kicked out of that brothel—”

“No, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have—” Dean toes the entryway and tosses out a sigh. He can still feel Sam beating down his neck like a fresh bead of sweat. “I want to, alright? I… I want this.”

Cas lifts his head and their eyes weave together again. Dean knows it doesn’t matter, playing his role or whatever. He knows this Cas is seeing and hearing the Dean from a little under a year ago, but something about this—about Cas and this memory, is different.

Leaving Sam in a dimly lit bathroom, Dean’s feet move by their own accord until he’s bent in front of Cas. After a moment, the angel’s swollen pink lips part and his strong hands come up to grip Dean’s shoulders tighter than a child’s on the handlebars of a brand new, training wheel-free bicycle.

Dean doesn’t lean into it, doesn’t influence him. Cas’s fingers slip in an effort to keep still, but soon finds comfort in sliding his digits down Dean’s sides and leaving little white lumps in his wake.

 _I know Cas isn’t healing me,_ Past Him thinks, _but like hell if it doesn’t feel like it._

When Cas’s sticky hands find the hem of his shirt, his eyes click with Dean’s again in silent question. Dean’s Adam’s apple, trapped like a ping pong ball between a table and the paddle, answers for him. Cas flicks his wrist, pulling Dean’s shirt over his head in a fluid motion.

“ _Ecarinu bolape,”_ breathes Cas, eyes filling like water behind a dam, _“a Samevelaji Caredazodizoda_.”

Then, his left hand glides up Dean’s newly exposed side again until it’s aligned with the handprint. Dean swears he sees it glow red, but can’t be sure with Cas’s warm breath pounding on his lips. Dean makes the same mistake of flicking his tongue across his upper lip, because the back of the wiry, wet flesh pokes Cas’s lower lip. Like a trap door, the angel’s mouth involuntarily falls open with a generous sigh, and for a moment, with the world ticking away by the second, all they do is breathe into each other.

Then Dean remembers he has hands too, and with them grips the base of Cas’s sweat-curled hairs, pulling him just close enough to slop their lips together. Eager and wet, Cas shrugs out of his wrinkled coat and leans into Dean. He tastes like ale and Ed Hardy perfume left behind from that girl, Chastity.

“B-bye, Cas,” he shudders against his mouth before dropping a small parting gift into the crook of his neck, “see you in the real world.”

With a painful throbbing between his legs and an even tighter throbbing in his chest, Dean slinks off Cas. He doesn’t bother with his shirt, nor does he look behind him to see Cas’s deft hands work with the figment of Dean’s jeans. He doesn’t need to revisit a memory he may never bother repeating.

Meanwhile, Sam’s flicks a receipt he finds on the small table in the corner. “Nine twenty-four,” he breathes. “The same day—”

Before either of them knows it, they’re in a hole-in-the-wall bar that looks like a shot out of Semisonic’s “Closing Time”.

“Very mysterioso,” a girl comments. She’s Plain Jane, but very pretty: short, with wavy blonde hair and a wardrobe stolen from the Winchesters. “I like it—” Her flattery cuts off as she turns to the sound of the Channel 6 female anchor coming in on the overhead Casio:

“ _Locals say that what started as a torrential hailstorm late this afternoon suddenly turned to massive lightning strikes that triggered the fires now consuming more than twenty acres here along the Route 17 corridor. County officials are advising all Tully residents to prepare for what could become mandatory evacuatio_ —”

“Damn,” the bartender, a balding man with long greasy grey hair, mumbles with a jumbo remote in hand, “is it me or does it seem like it's the end of the world?”

Dean drinks in the scene like a tall lager. “So this is where you were when we went season five _Jumpstreet_.”

“Dean—”

“She’s cute,” says Dean, gesturing to girl. “Did you guys—?”

Sam bites his lip. “Dean. Are we going to talk about what happened back there?”

“I know, I left the water on. I usually have my doubts _before_ I leave the house, but—” Embracing the sight of his brother with his arms crossed, Dean finally relents: “I… I don’t know. I don’t know, man.”

There’s a long, impenetrable silence hanging between them like bait on a hook. Sam’s teeth are the first to sink into it: “I’ll say. I mean, really, a brothel?”

“It was Happy Hour,” argues Dean, a smile threatening to release all the tension in him like someone tying the end of a balloon, “‘Quarter for a porter’.”

“Whatever. And for what it’s worth, Lindsey was a stand-up girl.”

“ _Lindsey,_ ah, okay,” Dean scoffs. “And are we talking about in bed or—?”

Dean can’t help but feel proud of the blush he slaps his little brother’s face just before he grouses, “Shut up,” and thinks, yeah, maybe he can spend another eternity with his stubborn ass.

But only if Cas can join them.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> What Cas says to Dean: “Praise be the Righteous Man.” (It’s better in Enochian.)


End file.
